Review Questions Chapter 1

Explain the concept of diversity. How will diversity create new demands on HRM?

Workplace diversity can be defined as the varied personal characteristics of employees that make the workplace heterogeneous. In the workplace there can be people of different age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, disabilities, and religious backgrounds. Human resource managers must recognize individual differences and respond to them in a way that will ensure employee retention and increased productivity. One way to do this is to establish diversity programs that provide diversity training to employees.

What are the necessary ingredients for a successful empowerment program?

A successful empowerment program gives the worker control over his or her job. This can be done with delegation, participative management, creation of work teams, setting goals, and extensive employee training.

What is the purpose of a continuous improvement program? What role does HRM play in assisting continuing improvements?

Continuous improvement programs are an organization's commitment to constantly improving quality of products or services. HRM must manage employees' productivity and attitudes effectively in order to make sure they are playing their parts continuous improvement strategies. HRM must empower and motivate employees to provide quality service.

How has globalization contributed to the need for diversity awareness in our organizations?

Due to globalization, organizations are no longer constrained by national borders. Now that multinational corporations are commonplace, organizations need to adapt to many new cultural and ethnic traditions of the foreign regions that they operate within. Globalization also contributes to increased diversity of workers in organizations here in the United States due to immigration. Human resource professionals need to be aware of foreign societal issues, legal systems, and cultural differences in order to properly accommodate workers of all backgrounds.

What are ethics and why are they important?

Ethics are a set of rules or principles that defines right and wrong conduct. Unethical conduct may result in an employee causing harm or distress to another employee, customer, or business. This type of unethical behavior might result in lawsuits or failure to retain employees. Many companies set ethical guidelines by creating a code of conduct.

How can human resource managers help employees deal with work/life issues?

Human resource managers need to help employees deal with work/life issues by allowing them flexibility. The flexibility can be achieved by modifying work hours, shifting from full time to part time, or allowing an employee to use technology to work from home.

Explain the roles HR plays in dealing with current employment challenges such as mergers, offshoring, the recession and economy.

In company mergers and offshoring it is important for HR to make sure employees stay focused on serving customers rather than focusing on keeping their jobs by establishing a planned communication strategy. In recessions layoffs are common and HR must keep workers focused and keep morale high. HR will have to retrain workers who are required to take on more responsibilities.

Describe how technology has influenced workforce skills and the role of human resource managers.

In today's workplace technology places a critical role. Workers are expected to know how to properly operate computers, utilize the internet, use machinery, and even use the proper transportation methods to get to work. The role of human resource managers has changed in that they must find employees that are adept at using and incorporating technology in their jobs. Human resource managers must also be prepared to help workers from foreign countries in adapting and learning how to use technologies they may not have had in their countries of origin.

What is a knowledge worker? What HRM changes can be expected in dealing with knowledge workers with respect to recruiting, selection, motivation, and work/life issues?

Knowledge workers are individuals whose jobs are designed around the acquisition and application of information. HRM can post online job postings and accept resumes online in order to ensure the potential employee has basic technological skills. Selecting these employees may be difficult but using internet tools to find applicants make the process easier. Motivating knowledge workers can be hard due to distractions so it is important to monitor their activities to prevent productivity losses.